Tales of Happy Valley
Chapter 109: The Longest Journey Begins With a Single Step

While Gilbert was learning to become an escape artist, Barry himself was taking the school by a storm.

Barry's First A+

It only took one day of public school for him to realize that he wanted to go to the same private school that Alex and Mandy attended. So he took it upon himself to invite the headmaster over.

Barry shows The Houstonian to Headmaster Vince Walter

Of course, there was never really any doubt, but the moment Headmaster Walter realized who Barry's mom was, he decided to drop the charade and tell Barry he had been accepted into the private school. He didn't even stick around to mooch a free meal!

There's Influence, and then there's INFLUENCE

Having Barry's dad and his Uncle Ralphie hanging around in their SWAT gear might have been a deciding factor in skipping the meal part of the ceremonies.

After securing his education, Barry moved on to establishing a foothold in the local nursing staff with Aunt Frieda's friend, Fredonia Finagle. Assured of his power position in the medical industry, he immediately ventured to the bookshelf where he accomplished another major step toward world domination by learning all there is to know about cooking!

Barry Maxes Cooking

Nevertheless, it would be wise for Barry to keep an eye over his shoulder, because even without The Gift, his baby brother was fast catching up to him!

(Yoiks! When you have upwards of twenty people on the lot at once like that, do things slow down at all? Do you have an enormous honking computer running the universe, there? Great party, though; thanks for the pictures! :smilehap: )

Forgive me, dear reader, but the time has come to introduce you to yet another family in Happy Valley. We must backtrack a bit in time to the days when She was still carrying Her firstborn, Alexander and Amanda. That's when the Forsythes moved to town.

Bearach Forsythe with his wife Gormal and son Conner

Now, Conner was an adorable child, and his parents raised him on a steady diet of Smart Milk without even once wondering where the stuff comes from.

Conner grew up on Smart Milk

While Mandy and Alex were learning all about being a toddler, so was Conner.

Master Conner Forsythe masters the potty

Conner grew to childhood just the day before the Bennett kids, but since they were in Headmaster Vince Walter's school and he was in public school, the children had never had a chance to meet. However, this changed on the day that Conner became a teen.

Conner got into private school the day he became a teenager.

The very day that Mandy laid eyes on him, she thought there was something special about Conner. She invited him home for dinner that night, and the next morning, a Saturday, she invited him to come over to The Houstonian for a visit. She was so excited that she forgot to dress before he got there!

Mandy was delighted that Conner shared her passion for chess.

Over the chessboard, Conner learned more about Mandy, and obviously liked what he saw. That he was also impressed with her home and family goes without saying.

Embolded by the intimacy they developed in the gentle competition of the game board, Conner made his move.

Amanda and Conner's First Kiss

And the die was cast. Sheba's second-born (by a few seconds) was hopelessly in love, in a way that only Her daughter could ever be.

Amanda and Conner

Daddy came home from work, and Amanda had to rush out to tell him about her new boyfriend. She even passed her brother Barry, who normally did the honors of greeting daddy after work.

Amanda tells Greg about her new boyfriend

Now Conner, being no fool himself, knew that he would do well to get to know his new love's father.

You have to meet her father eventually. Best to get it done quickly.The little guy is Barry.

In fact, it never hurts if her father really likes you! Seeing Mandy being distracted by her brother Alex, Conner seized the opportunity.

(Yoiks! When you have upwards of twenty people on the lot at once like that, do things slow down at all? Do you have an enormous honking computer running the universe, there? Great party, though; thanks for the pictures! :smilehap: )

It did slow down a little bit when I had everybody on screen at once. I'm running The Sims on an hp media center pc m380n with 1.5 gigs of RAM and dual 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 processors. The graphics card is an nVida GeForce FX 5200.

[align=center:c8c5cd9090]Greg's Sims Box[/align:c8c5cd9090]

You can click on that image of my Device Manager window to get to the page in The Sims 2 at SimsHost where I wrote some notes about system requirements. That machine is a bit of overkill, though an even faster graphics card would help with big parties. And I like big parties!

FWIW, my display is a wide-screen Samsung SyncMaster 213T flat panel. The machine has hardware and software to support high-fidelity audio and video editing as well as built-in radio and television tuners, but I really bought it to run Solidworks, a high-end CAD program.

The next morning, Greg fulfilled his lifetime want yet again by finally laying aside all denial and donning the uniform of Captain Hero.

Ever since She had been a teenager, She had told him that he should be the one wearing the uniform. Finally, She had found a way to push him into it.

Greg becomes Captain Hero

With his wife busy with Her perpetual pregnancy, somebody had to do it, and he was the only candidate in town to don the silly duds.

He did not understand the phenomenon of The Gift. She was the first person in Happy Valley to demonstrate the super powers of Captain Hero. Through Her senses (and his, if he would admit it) they had learned that many others had The Gift to one degree or another, but until now, there had been only one superhero. Now there were two.

Nevertheless, he had long felt the presence of another. Each new child added to that feeling of being accompanied on the path of The Gift, but that elusive presence continued to remain somewhere on the periphery of his imagination. He wasn't sure it was real.

Until now, it had been easy to deny the whole thing. The Gift was something to Her, not a thing for him to get involved in.

Then came the telepathic flying baby born with knowledge beyond his years. That was something he could not deny. And so was the fact that that morning, he walked out in front of his house and flew up into the sky to resume the patrol.

"We've been thinking of expanding the family back to Manse Orleans," Frieda said. "Gilbert has reached an age where he his learning more from his father than his mother so I don't think it's as important for me to be here all day, and I would like to have another child."

As planned, as soon as Alex and Mandy were off to college, both She and Frieda were pregnant again. The college kids posted penants in the nursery to celebrate, and soon enough there were more babies to fill the void.

She named her fourth child Cally as a complement Frieda's daughter Cybil. By the time these two were toddlers, Barry had joined his brother and sister at college and She was pregnant yet again.

Wake-up time for Cally and Cybil

Giles worked hard at his career and got promoted to the top spot, but he still made time for his daughter. He was there when Cybil learned to walk...

yay! I've been waiting anxiously for the next installment greg, great as usual!

I am even back on dialup and waited for all the pictures to load

Thanks! I'm actually trying to get the story caught up to the point that it gets really interesting again! These family sims spent a nice quiet time just having fun being family sims, making babies and bringing them up and enjoying every minute of it.

I suppose I could skip through a few of the kids but then the screen shots that I have wouldn't make as much sense.

Gilbert and Cally's birthdays fell on the same day. He became a teenager the same day she became a child.

Cally's Child Birthday

Gilbert was doing extremely well in school, in fact out-performing his precocious brother Barry's impressive record of skill development. Inwardly he was quite proud of his achievements, but it embarrassed him to have anyone speak of it.

Now that Gilbert was a teen, Giles and Frieda felt comfortable with reopening Manse Orleans. After fond farewells that would have been more appropriate to moving across country rather than a block away, they bundled themselves into the taxi.

Back at the ManseGiles, Frieda, and toddler Cybil

Cybil wasn't so sure about leaving her Uncle Greg and Aunt Sheba, not to mention her precious cousin Gilbert and cousin Cally! But she quickly learned that there are distinct benefits to being the only child and the baby of the family to boot!

It was kind of nice not to have to compete with Cally and Dora for her parents' attention, even if she had fewer parents to compete for!